Towards the modern university.

The rapid growth of public musical life during the 18th century gave a strong stimulus to university musical activities and eventually its curriculum. After about 1750, concerts and ceremonies at many universities came to form part of the larger musical world. In Cambridge the Installation of the Vice-Chancellor had always been a major musical event, but by 1749 the one for the Duke of Newcastle was described as ‘a great musical crash … which was greatly admired’. By 1811 the one for the Duke of Gloucester involved diverse concerts and audiences of 2000 people.

Oxford had participated centrally in the rise of public concerts, since events of that nature were held in public houses during the Commonwealth. But after the erection, under Hayes's direction, of the Holywell Music Room, which opened in 1748, the city became second only to London in concert life, partly because the new toll roads made it easy for major performers to go there from London. All authority over public events was vested in the Vice-Chancellor of the University, and the Musical Society was ultimately a creature of university life, its directing committee consisting of representatives from each college, usually a ‘Fellow, Scholar, Exhibitioner, or Chaplain’ (the Articles of 1757). The society provided music and associated concerts for Commemoration, the Acts and the openings of new buildings.

The awarding of the MusB and the MusD changed fundamentally in meaning in the middle of the 19th century. This formed part of the formalization of teaching and expansion of research activities within universities throughout the Western world. During the 17th and 18th centuries the music degrees at the two long-established English universities had served as honorary degrees for musicians thought of particular distinction, with the requirement only that they compose a work for the occasion. In Oxford, Frederick Ouseley, professor from 1855 to 1889, began a long process of designing taught degrees in music, instituting residence requirements and examinations not only in music but also in mathematics, Latin and Greek. Examining boards led to a more formal structure of a music department. Students from other institutions, including conservatories, received degrees under the aegis of the university. At Cambridge, William Sterndale Bennett played a similar role in reforming degree requirements while serving as professor of music between 1856 and 1875. The number of awards of the MusB there grew from 12 in 1800–40 to 44 in 1875–1900. It is also clear that the undergraduate often had much to do with musical life. The letters of John Addington Symonds during his years in Oxford (1857–64) show an intense fascination with works by Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini that was to play an important part in his later writings within the Decadent movement.

The universities contributed significantly to new movements in musical life. The Musical Antiquarian Society was set up in Cambridge in 1840, bringing concerts and the reconstruction of old instruments. The Folk Music Society was founded there in 1898. Charles Villiers Stanford brought Cambridge into close touch with new tendencies in both foreign music and British music as conductor of the Cambridge University Music Society and professor from 1887 to 1924. The dawning of the special role that universities played in new music during the 20th century can be seen in the fact that the distinguished pianist Harold Bauer offered an unusual number of recent works, chiefly by Debussy and Ravel, when he visited Cambridge or Oxford.

The entrance of music into university curricula formed part of a much wider integration of musical thinking into intellectual life as a whole. The neo-classicism of the 18th century permitted a new variety of principles, by which music of the 16th century was now termed ‘ancient’ music, such as would have seemed foolish a century before. Public musical events and periodicals for general readership stimulated each other: columns of news on concerts and the opera became standard by 1800. In Britain and German-speaking countries members of universities were closely involved in the new musical press, from William Hayes in Oxford to J.N. Forkel in Leipzig.

Almost all the newer British universities made appointments in music by the early 20th century. One had been made in 1764 at Trinity College, Dublin (the Earl of Mornington); there followed Edinburgh in 1839, Aberystwyth in 1872, Durham in 1890, London in 1902, Birmingham a few years later and Glasgow in 1930.

That the same was not true in France indicates how deeply and how long it remained divided over religious matters, and how much that limited the role of music in the universities. The Sorbonne had a relationship each with Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sainte-Chapelle for ceremonies, and during the 18th century there existed a music director for such events. But music did not play an important role in its rituals, nor within its intellectual life. Only at the end of the 19th century did musical writings begin to come out of that university. During the 1890s and early 1900s the doctorat ès lettres was awarded for theses on musical topics to Romain Rolland, Louis Laloy and Jules Comparieu, through the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, a professional school closely linked to the university. In 1896 Lionel Dauriac began lecturing on musical aesthetics, and some 15 years later André Pirro became chargé de cours for the history of music, offering two different certificates. But the scholarly study of music history remained almost entirely in the Conservatoire, in the Schola Cantorum and among private individuals until after World War II.

German universities led the world in the modernization of programmes: since most had maintained neutrality in confessional identity since the Reformation, they were unusually open to innovation and leadership. Music directors took on specially high status in the academic hierarchy, both conducting ensembles and lecturing on music theory and history. The two most important early figures were Forkel in Göttingen and D.G. Türk in Halle; after both were appointed in 1779, Forkel was honoured as Magister ohne Examen und umsonst in 1787 and Türk was named professor in 1808. A series of other German universities followed suit: F.J. Fröhlich in Würzburg (1811), F.S. Gassner in Giessen (1818), H.C. Breidenstein in Bonn (1826) and A.B. Marx in Berlin (1830). Many were active in musical life as writers and critics as well as performers; Forkel, for example, published a series of almanacs on musical events. Their salaries were nonetheless usually less than half that of a professor, requiring them to continue activity outside the university.

Careers devoted to music history emerged out of those followed by music directors, a process that took over 100 years. Forkel, regarded as the founder of music history as a scholarly discipline, mixed theoretical, practical and historical topics in his lectures; specialized historical study was not established until the end of the 19th century. Among the most important milestones were the bestowal of the first doctorate of philosophy for a musical topic (Über das Schöne in der Musik) to Briedenthal in Giessen in 1821, and the award of the Ordinariat to Eduard Hanslick in Vienna in 1870, Gustav Jacobsthal in Strasbourg in 1897 and Hermann Kretzschmar in Berlin in 1904. The grounds for legitimization of the profession changed from period to period, from a humanistic idea of the whole person made by Marx (who had to remain Professor Extraordinarius) to a scientific one by the end of the century. In the process, lines were drawn between preparation of scholars, performers and teachers: the purer kind of scholar emerged in the careers of Oesterley, Nohl, A.W. Ambros and Spitta. During the first half of the 20th century, music history dominated most schools of music in universities, and the study of performance increasingly shifted into the conservatories (now called ‘Hochschulen’).

The training of musicians and teachers entered the Scandinavian universities more centrally than was the case in Germany. The first professors were appointed in 1918 in Helsinki, in 1926 in Turku and Copenhagen and in 1947 in Uppsala. In the Netherlands and Belgium practices followed the German example more closely, with appointments in Brussels in 1931, Utrecht in 1934 and Amsterdam in 1953.

In the USA, the first university musical activities were performing societies of a convivial nature, usually not officially recognized by the institutions. At Harvard the Pierian Sodality (1808) and the Glee Club (1858) performed both vocal and instrumental music and gradually shifted to giving public concerts. The Glee Club grew out of the appointment of a choir director for the university chapel and obtained its own head, Archibald T. Davison, in 1912. John Knowles Paine built up the music department as the first professor of music between 1875 and 1906, and the first doctorate was granted in 1905.

Music grew up within Yale University largely under the beneficence of graduates, chiefly from the Battell family, who gave funds for instruction and performing groups. In 1854 Gustave Stoeckel, an émigré from Kaiserlauten, was engaged to teach students without offering credit. The Bachelor of Music degree was introduced in 1893, ‘for the study of the Science by students already proficient in the elements of it’. The first faculty members were the prominent organist and composer Horatio Parker and Samuel Simons Sanford, an accomplished pianist from a wealthy Bridgeport family, who served without pay as Professor of Applied Music from 1894 to 1910. As was the case at the University of Michigan, American universities developed active music programmes but did not attempt to train performers in this period. Other early programmes included the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; the first chair of musicology in the USA came with the appointment of Otto Kinkeldey at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1930.

Universities, §II: 1600–1945

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ten Years of University Music in Oxford, being a Brief Record of the Proceedings of the Oxford University Musical Union during the Years 1884–1894 (Oxford, 1894)

M. Brenêt: ‘La musicologie’, Rapport sur la musique française contemporaine, ed. P.-M. Masson (Rome, 1913), 18–19

A. Schering: Musikgeschichte Leipzigs (Leipzig, 1926)

W.R. Spalding: Music at Harvard (Cambridge, MA, 1935–77)

N.C. Carpenter: Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman, OK, 1957)

W.F. Kümmel: ‘Die Anfänge der Musikgeschichte an den deutschsprachigen Universitäten’, Mf, xx (1967), 262–80

J.A. Symonds: The Letters of John Addington Symonds, ed. H.M. Schueller and R.L. Peters (Detroit, 1967–9)

C.R. Nutter: 125 Years of the Harvard Musical Association (Cambridge, MA, 1968)

Bach-Dokumente, Bach-Archiv, Leipzig (Kassel, 1969)

K.W. Niemöller: ‘Zur Musiktheorie in enzyklopädischen Wissenschaftssystem des 16./17. Jahrhunderts’, Über Musiktheorie: Berlin 1970, 23–36

M. Crum: ‘An Oxford Music Club, 1690–1719’, Bodleian Library Record, ix (1974), 83–99

F. Knight: Cambridge Music from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Cambridge, 1980)

S. Wollenberg: ‘Music in 18th-Century Oxford’, PRMA, cviii (1981–2), 151–62

M. Delahaye and D. Pistone: Musique et musicologie dans les universités françaises (Paris, 1982)

K.W. Niemöller: ‘Zum Einfluss des Humanismus auf Position und Konzeption von Musik im deutschen Bildungssystem der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Musik in Humanismus und Renaissance, ed. W. Ruegg and A. Schmitt (Weinheim, 1983), 77–97

L. Noss: A History of the Yale School of Music, 1855–1970 (New Haven, CT, 1984)

J. Caldwell: ‘Music in the Faculty of Arts’, History of Oxford, iii, ed. J. McConica (Oxford, 1986), 201–12

K.W. Niemöller: ‘Musik als Lehrgegenstand an den deutschen Universitäten des 16./17. Jahrhunderts’, Mf, xl (1987), 303–19

M. Staehelin, ed.: Musikwissenschaft und Musikpflege an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, 1987)

C. Wright: ‘Music in the History of the Universities’, AcM, lix (1987), 8–10

D.J. Fisher: Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement (Berkeley, 1988)

‘Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Music Collection’, British Library Journal, xv (1989), 187–205

R. Szeskus: ‘Bach und die Leipziger Universitätsmusik’, BMw, xxxii (1990), 161–9

G. Engmann and B. Wiechert: ‘Tag voller Anmuth, voller Pracht: zur musikalische Gestaltung der Universitätsjubiläen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert’, Göttinger Jb, xl (1992), 253–79

W. Weber: Rise of Musical Classics in 18th-Century England (Oxford, 1992)

J. Burchell: Polite or Commercial Concerts? Concert Management and Orchestral Repertoire in Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford, Manchester, and Newcastle, 1830–99 (New York, 1996)

G. Rothmund-Gaul: Zwischen Takstock und Hörsaal: das Amt des Universitätsmusikdirektors in Tübingen, 1817–1952 (Stuttgart, 1997)

J. Fulcher: French Cultural Politics and Music: from the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (New York, 1999)

H. Irving: Ancients and Moderns: William Crotch and the Development of Classical Music (Aldershot, 1999)

Universities

III. After 1945

1. France.

2. Germany.

3. Italy.

4. The USA.

5. Great Britain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Universities, §III: After 1945

France.

Between 1945 and 1968 music was entirely absent from the curricula of French universities. Musicology was taught in only three: Strasbourg (from 1872), Paris (from 1903) and Poitiers (from 1961). It was a subsidiary subject, to be studied as an adjunct to education in another discipline such as history or literature. The one major innovation during this period was the creation of a first postgraduate doctorate, the doctorat de 3e cycle, in 1958. This new diploma, requiring a shorter thesis than those submitted for the full doctoral degree (the doctorat d'Etat or doctorat ès lettres still essential for candidates applying for positions as university teachers), prompted a sharp rise in the numbers of submitted theses on musicological subjects, from about five a year in the 1960s to about 15 a year in the 70s.

Reforms instituted in 1969 progressively introduced music into university studies on a par (at least in principle) with other disciplines in the humanities. The primary motive was to bring the training of secondary-school teachers of music and the plastic arts into line with that of teachers in other subjects. (Until 1968 music and art teachers qualified at teachers’ training centres outside the universities.) As a result, musicology became a possible choice of special subject in a complete university course in music, and for the first time universities would offer posts to musicologists. The reforms took place in the context of a wider series of changes manifested in the founding of more universities, and particularly in the splitting of the University of Paris into smaller units. Since 1969 Paris intra muros (within the city) has had seven universities, four of which (Paris I, Paris III, Paris IV and Paris V) have part of their premises at the Sorbonne, the prestigious site of the old Faculty of Letters. Six more universities in the suburbs, Paris VIII to Paris XIII, were added to these seven. In 1969 Paris IV and Paris VIII were authorized to provide music teaching; a year later Aix-en-Provence in association with Marseilles I, Tours in association with Poitiers, and Strasbourg II also introduced the new subject.

In 1984, the French system of doctoral studies was simplified in order to facilitate mobility among researchers and make it more like the system in other countries (notably Germany, the UK and the USA). A single doctoral degree was introduced, and training in research, previously almost non-existent, is now conducted within a doctoral training group. The first year of doctoral studies leads to a diplôme d'études approfondies (diploma in further studies; DEA), which recognizes both theoretical and methodological training, and introduces basic research techniques. The recommended period spent writing the post-DEA thesis is two to four years. The old ‘main’ thesis for the degree of doctorat d'Etat has been replaced by an habilitation à diriger des recherches (authorization to supervise research work; HDR), which is required of anyone applying for a position as a university professor.

In 1999 music was being taught in 20 of the 85 French universities. While there is considerable variation in curricula, all universities must prepare students for national diplomas, and the content of these studies is set by the government. (The advantage of this system is that students can begin their studies at one university and continue them at another.) The teaching covers aural training, composition, practical music (singing and instrumental performance), criticism and analysis, music history and acoustics; part of the course is usually set aside for non-musical subjects (such as literature, the other arts or languages), and part remains free for options chosen by the university or the student. The first two years of study lead to a diplôme universitaire d'études générales (DEUG), and the third year leads to the first degree, after which the student has two options: either to take the high-level competitive examination to recruit secondary-school teachers, or to spend a year working for a master's degree, which usually involves more intensive work and sometimes original research (candidates applying to study for the doctoral DEA must hold a master's degree). Of the 20 universities teaching music, only 13 prepare students for the master's degree, and there are only eight centres for doctoral training in music and/or musicology.

The French system is unusual in attempting to combine music and musicology on the basis of a three-year common-core curriculum. This approach has its advantages but is not without drawbacks, the most serious being the growing predominance of technical studies (solfeggio, harmony, analysis and theory) over intellectual studies (notably in music history). Increasingly, the main objective seems to be to train secondary-school teachers, and research (a field in which there are admittedly fewer openings) is rarely given priority.

See also Musicology, §III, 1.

Universities, §III: After 1945

Germany.

After World War II, institutes of musicology with the right to award the PhD (in some cases called ‘seminaries’) were built up again in German universities, in their traditional place within the philosophy faculty. Some new universities, mostly created in the 1960s (Bochum, Kassel, Oldenburg etc.), also acquired musicological institutes, and others were attached to Staatliche Musikhochschulen – colleges of music responsible for training in musical performance and for the teaching profession (Berlin, Hanover, Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf etc.; see Conservatories, §IV). Ideals deriving from Wilhelm Humboldt's views on university education provided guiding principles: the education of a cultured personality rather than vocational training; freedom to change one's place of study (academische Freiheit); and the interdependence of research and teaching. The only condition of entrance to university was, and still is, the attainment of the higher school-leaving certificate, or ‘Abitur’. For over two decades after 1945 the doctorate was still the only degree awarded. As numbers of students grew, especially during the 1970s, the MA degree was established, both to determine whether the student was suited for the PhD and to provide a new finishing qualification. For many years there was no BA degree; a continuing rise in student numbers at the end of the 20th century, however, brought the realization that not all can or wish to profit from the lengthy MA course. The economic burden of long years of study also forced a consideration of the BA, and, in a few cases, its actual introduction.

German students study two or three subjects for the MA, of which musicology may be the principal or a subsidiary subject. (In the German Democratic Republic, 1949–89, it was also possible to take a diploma in musicology without subsidiary subjects.) The general pattern of study is now that of about four semesters (two years) up to an intermediate examination (the Zwischenprüfung, a relatively recent development), and about six more semesters until the MA examination. If musicology is the principal subject, a short thesis is submitted. Students are free to choose both the time when they will be examined and their examiners (another aspect of academische Freiheit), although guidelines about the length of time of study are becoming more rigidly enforced. Courses are therefore divided generally into those suitable for study either before or after the intermediate examination, but there is no division into first-year or second-year courses. After the MA, students may proceed to the PhD (Promotion). An extra qualification, however, the Habilitation (sometimes thought of as a second doctorate), is required before a professorship may be taken up.

German musicological institutes are strongly hierarchical, usually with two professorships (three or four in a few large universities) and one assistant on a limited-term contract, who will typically be completing the Habilitation or seeking a professorship. Almost all other courses will be given by part-time teachers. The competition for professorships, even after the long and arduous road to the Habilitation and beyond, is correspondingly intense. It has resulted in a relatively narrow, élite stratum of scholars, of considerable social prestige (and civil-servant status), many of whom will be directing research and editorial projects. Below this level, however, posts are neither plentiful nor secure nor well paid. Posts equivalent to, say, that of the British lecturer do not exist.

There is great variation in the size of music departments. Some have only a handful of graduates in a year, others several dozen. The actual number of students enrolled ranges from 50 or fewer to several hundred (the extra teaching load in bigger departments is taken up by part-time teachers, while professors remain in charge of examining).

Professorships have traditionally been held by music historians covering complementary periods of music history. In the 1970s pressure gradually mounted for more attention to be paid to the different branches of systematic musicology (such as acoustics, music psychology and sociology). Despite the obstacles inherent in the system to changing the orientation of a professorship, or creating a new one, posts in systematic musicology were established in some larger universities (e.g. Cologne, Hamburg). A few professorships in ethnomusicology also exist.

With some variation depending on the make-up of the teaching staff, German students will study mainly music history, with little or no systematic musicology. Such areas as jazz and popular musics are also rarely represented. Harmony, counterpoint, score reading and so on are commonly taught in the early stages of study. Musical analysis as a more highly developed discipline has been slow to establish itself. To some extent this reflects the distinction still maintained between ‘education’ and ‘training’. (In those universities with teacher-training departments, the teaching of some musical skills may be shared between the musicology and music education departments.) Musical performance as an element in degree courses is practically unknown, although universities usually support an orchestra, choir and other ensembles open to members of all faculties.

Lists of the main lectures and seminars held at musicological institutes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are published twice annually in Die Musikforschung (in many respects the organization and curricula of Austrian and Swiss universities resemble the German pattern). Whereas in the 1950s there were musicological institutes at 17 universities in West Germany and West Berlin, this number had doubled by the end of the 1970s. In East Germany, with initially five university institutes, the twin pillars of research and teaching were sundered, many musicology departments being closed or reduced to servicing teacher-training, while research was concentrated in special institutes outside the university system. The Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, founded in 1948, remained common to the two Germanies until 1968, when East German members were obliged to resign and join the Kommission für Musikwissenschaft des Komponistenverbandes. After the reunification of Germany in 1989, university institutes in the former German Democratic Republic were integrated into a unified system. In the late 1990s there were over 40, with seven comparable institutes in Austria and four in Switzerland.

The challenge of rebuilding the edifice of German musicology after 1945 was met by outstandingly gifted scholars, who were able to launch such landmarks in the history of the discipline as the encyclopedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (ed. Friedrich Blume), new complete editions of several composers’ works and other monumental series. In retrospect, the institutional environment for these achievements appears to have been propitious. In the last quarter of the 20th century, however, several factors made it difficult to pursue the traditional goals as single-mindedly as in the first two decades after the war. The intellectual upheaval at the end of the 1960s questioned the concentration of musicology on historical and philological research. Alongside the great expansion in the potential scope of the discipline itself, student numbers increased inexorably, making traditional patterns of study and teaching impracticable. The need to coordinate courses at a European level also became important. All these factors will presumably lead to changes in the way musicological institutes function in Germany in the future.

See also Musicology, §III, 4.

Universities, §III: After 1945

Italy.

Apart from a few private universities, none of which offers courses in music, the Italian university system is public and was formerly organized nationally, initially under the control of the Ministry of Public Education and then (from 1989) under the Ministry of the University and Scientific and Technological Research.) Entrance to university before World War II was restricted to graduates of an accredited classical lyceum who passed a national exam; after the war this requirement was gradually relaxed and entrance is now open to all who complete any accredited secondary school curriculum. By the late 1990s the number of universities had risen to 69, with a teaching staff of 49,000, an administrative staff of 58,000 and 1,700,000 students.

The University of Turin offered a course in music history as early as 1925. The first chair of music was established at the University of Florence in 1941 (it was eliminated in 1953), the second at the University of Rome in 1957; among those who campaigned for music courses were Raffaello Monterosso and Giuseppe Vecchi, as well as Diego Carpitella. Until the 1970s most universities recruited untenured teachers on a yearly basis. An important university reform law of 1978 established the tenured categories of full professor (professore ordinario), associate professor (professore associato) and researcher (ricercatore). At the same time music history, which previously had generally been taught within an institute of art history or Italian literature, was grouped with related disciplines in departments of the arts or performing arts.

By 1998 music history was being taught at some 30 Italian universities. Other courses (musical dramaturgy, musical philology, paleography, ethnomusicology, history of theory etc.) may also be offered, but only a few universities regularly teach several music subjects. Those granting degrees in musicology are the universities of Pavia at Cremona (since 1952), Bologna (1970), Macerata at Fermo (1989) and Cosenza (1990). Universities do not offer practical training in music – this is left to Conservatories – and even university choirs are rare.

The student of music at a university usually pursues a liberal arts degree; the 21 exams (which may have a written part but, by law, must also contain an oral part) cover the music subjects available at the particular university, as well as a selection of other liberal arts subjects. A degree related to preserving Italy's artistic heritage was instituted in the 1990s, but it only occasionally includes courses concerned with music. All university students must write a final thesis: given the availability in Italy of primary sources, this is most often based on original research and may be on the level of a PhD dissertation. In 1999 a government proposal was passed which would reduce university courses to three years (without thesis), followed by an optional two-year course (with thesis); specialization, for instance in education, would entail a two-year course.

An advanced degree called Dottorato di Ricerca was instituted in 1978 and is available only at universities which specifically request it from the government. Until 1998 students could take part in the advanced degree only if they passed an entrance examination and obtained one of the few government grants. In the future, however, it is expected that each university will award its own grants. In music, in order to provide more courses and facilities, groups of two or more universities have offered Dottorato di Ricerca programmes jointly, with administrative seats established at Bologna in 1983, Pavia at Cremona in 1987 and Rome in 1991.

Faculty openings are filled by public competition, held at the government's discretion. Because such competitions have been infrequent, university music careers in Italy have been largely stagnant. A new system of competition, however, was implemented in 1999, resulting in a marked increase in the number of full and associate professors. In 1993 the Associazione fra Docenti Universitari Italiani di Musica was founded to promote discussions with the government; in 2000 it had 103 members, with F. Della Seta as president.

See also Musicology, §III, 2.

Universities, §III: After 1945

The USA.

Most colleges and universities in the USA, unlike their European counterparts, offer both academic and applied studies in music. Since 1945 many universities have established schools of music combining both types of study; among the larger schools are those of Indiana University and the universities of Michigan, Illinois and Texas. Such schools typically have much larger faculties and student bodies than academic departments of music. The department usually forms part of a school of arts and sciences, and its chair reports to the dean or director of the school. A school of music has more autonomy than a department, and its administrator reports to a higher level, usually the provost of the university. Most departments of music in colleges and most schools of music in universities offer both academic and applied instruction in music. Some departments, such as those at Harvard, Princeton and Columbia universities, maintain the European approach of excluding applied music but include instruction in composition (see also Conservatories, §IV).

Undergraduates typically choose a ‘music major’ leading to the Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Music (BM) or Bachelor of Music Education (BME) degree (the labels for these degrees vary: some institutions, for example, award the Bachelor of Fine Arts or Bachelor of Science in Music). In general the BA places more emphasis on the liberal arts and less on musical performance and composition than the BM; the BME prepares students to teach music in secondary schools. All three programmes include courses in the history and theory of music. Colleges and universities also offer numerous courses in music appreciation, music history, music literature and music theory for undergraduates not specializing in music.

At the graduate level students may work towards the Master of Arts (MA, an academic degree) or master's degrees in music performance or education. Master's degrees usually take one to two years to complete. Qualified students may then proceed to the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in musicology, ethnomusicology or music theory. Schools of music usually offer the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in performance. The doctorate in music education (DME) is most often administered by schools of education rather than departments or schools of music. Schools of music typically offer advanced degrees not only in applied music but also in academic studies, culminating in the PhD. Yale University is unusual in its inclusion of both a department of music for academic studies and a school of music for applied studies.

The range of academic courses offered in music for both undergraduate and graduate students has expanded greatly since 1945. An important impetus was the arrival in the USA during the late 1930s and 40s of numerous European musicologists, mostly German and Austrian, who fled the Nazi regime; among them were Alfred Einstein, Karl Geiringer, Otto Gombosi, Hugo Leichtentritt, Edward Lowinsky, Paul Nettl, Curt Sachs, Leo Schrade, Eric Werner and Emanuel Winternitz. Two disciples of Heinrich Schenker, Oswald Jonas and Felix Salzer, exerted a significant influence on music analysis.

In the years immediately following World War II undergraduate music-major courses consisted mainly of surveys of music history, courses in the music of specific composers and historical periods, and various theory courses. Musicological study at the graduate level was mostly historical, with special emphasis on medieval and Renaissance studies. In the mid-1960s, graduate schools began to pay more attention to later historical periods, although traditional musicological methods continued to be applied. The traditional approach to historical musicology has been maintained in many fields, especially in music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but new approaches have become increasingly important at both the graduate and undergraduate levels (see below). Graduate schools have also placed greater emphasis on the theory of music, in particular Schenkerian analysis, set theory and computer technology.

In the 1960s scholars such as Charles Seeger, Alan P. Merriam and Ki Mantle Hood brought the discipline of ethnomusicology to prominence. Merriam, active as an anthropologist at Northwestern University in the 1950s and at Indiana University beginning in 1962, emphasized the study of music within culture, as reflected in his book The Anthropology of Music (1964). From 1954 Hood taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he established the Institute of Ethnomusicology in 1961. In The Ethnomusicologist (1971) he argued that music must be understood both on its own terms, by participation in performance, and within the context of its society. His was the first programme in North America to offer instruction in playing the Javanese gamelan, and his institute also provided opportunities for students to perform a wide variety of other non-Western musics. Seeger's approach was universal: instead of separate historical and ethnomusicological studies, he advocated one musicology, although his work was of primary importance to ethnomusicologists. During the 1960s Seeger was research musicologist at the UCLA Institute of Ethnomusicology (until 1970). Graduate courses in ethnomusicology are offered in universities throughout the USA; among the most active programmes, in addition to those mentioned above, are those at Wesleyan University and the universities of Michigan and Illinois. Courses in non-Western musics have also been added to the curricula for undergraduates at many institutions.

Before 1945 colleges and universities paid little attention to art music in the USA, and virtually none to American psalmody, folktunes, African American music, jazz and popular entertainment music. From the 1960s, however, these genres became increasingly important to scholars teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In 1961 Gilbert Chase founded the Inter-American Institute for Musical Research at Tulane University, and a decade later H. Wiley Hitchcock established the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College. Richard Crawford, at the University of Michigan, has been an important influence on research and teaching in the field. Most institutions now offer courses in American music, and universities with ethnomusicological programmes have taken the lead in research in a variety of American musics.

Jazz entered the curricula of North American colleges and universities as an area of applied study. In 1947 North Texas State Teacher's college (now the University of North Texas) at Denton became the first institution in the USA to offer a programme in jazz performance; Indiana University followed shortly thereafter. Virtually every college and university that teaches applied music now has at least one jazz band, and courses in jazz improvisation are offered at many institutions. This trend, coupled with the increased interest in ethnomusicology and American studies, led to the introduction of undergraduate and graduate courses in jazz history, and to the writing of dissertations on jazz (viewed today as a ‘classical’ music). The Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University is among several important centres fostering the study of jazz.

Since the 1970s the study of the music of African Americans has become increasingly prominent. A major impetus for research in this field was the Black Music Center at Indiana University, founded in 1970 by Dominique-René de Lerma. This centre, which continued into the 1980s, served as a clearing-house, depository and research-reference site for the documentation of African American music history. Also in 1970 Indiana University established a Department of Afro-American Studies, in which students may concentrate on music while also taking courses in the School of Music. The department is one of the two most important locations for teaching and research in this field, the other being the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago, founded in 1983 by Samuel A. Floyd jr.

Among the more recent developments in the academic study of music in North American colleges and universities are those associated with ‘the new musicology’ (See Musicology, §III, 8). These include a variety of approaches modelled on trends in literary criticism, studies of women in music, gay and lesbian issues in music, the criticism of music in terms of gender, and music in relation to politics and various ideologies. Of these approaches, the subject of women in music appears to have had the greatest influence on curricula. The advent of the computer has also had a wide-ranging impact on music teaching and research (see Computers and music, §VII). Since the 1980s computers have been used to assist in teaching undergraduate theory and music appreciation courses. In the 1990s interactive music programs on CD-ROM began to be used in teaching undergraduate music history and appreciation. At the graduate level, the teaching of bibliography and the practice of research have been transformed by the availability of on-line bibliographic databases. The computer has become an indispensable tool for music students at every level.

Universities, §III: After 1945

Great Britain.

Although British universities have granted music degrees as a professional qualification since the 15th century (and were, indeed, the first in Europe to do so), it was not until after World War II that music was accepted as a subject suitable for full-time study. Undergraduate music degrees were instituted at Cambridge in 1945 and at Oxford in 1950. In both these institutions the link with the cathedral tradition has been an essential ingredient, since individual colleges have maintained their own choral establishments, which have attained the highest standards over several centuries. In the postwar years, chairs in music and full-scale music departments were also established at many of the new ‘red-brick’ universities. Although there have always been opportunities for performance, the main purpose of these programmes was to provide a general education in music with an emphasis on scholarship and research; these remain the primary basis of most higher degrees. University curricula in this period included imitative composition, usually in styles from the 16th century to the early 19th; music history and literature; and skills such as fugal composition, critical commentary, ear training and keyboard tests. Free composition or performance was an option for a student's final year, and individual dissertations were admitted later.

This traditional curriculum has been maintained in the oldest British universities. Musical scholarship since World War II, largely through these institutions, has opened up a wider historical repertory through the work of figures such as Gerald Abraham, Denis Arnold, Frank Ll. Harrison and J.A. Westrup. The series Musica Britannica was founded in 1952 with Anthony Lewis as general editor and Thurston Dart as secretary. Dart started the department at King’s College, London, in 1964, and his legacy of scholarship applied to the performance and recording of early music was carried forward in the careers of such practitioners as David Munrow, John Eliot Gardiner and Christopher Hogwood. The presence in universities of immigrant scholars such as Hans Redlich, Egon Wellesz and, in the 1990s, Reinhard Strohm, has expanded British horizons. In 1964 Wilfrid Mellers started the Music Department at York with a staff of composers and a teaching programme reflecting all aspects of contemporary music as well as connections with the study of literature and music education. This use of composers, although completely independent, had parallels with the ‘Literature and Materials’ programme at the Juilliard School of Music, New York, established a decade earlier.

In 1962 Peter Maxwell Davies felt he had to go to Princeton to study composition seriously; however, the study of 20th-century music steadily gained ground in the newer music departments. Electronic studios proliferated in the 1960s and 70s, and computers were soon being used for composition, analysis and eventually the delivery of teaching materials. Courses in jazz and popular music were developed with notable contributions to the field from Richard Middleton and the journal Popular Music (1981) as well as such specialists as Stephen Banfield. Musicology itself gradually expanded to include ethnomusicology, pioneered by John Blacking, psychology, acoustics, gender studies and applied aspects such as music education, music therapy and arts administration, which all found a place in university curricula.

This unprecedented diversification within a generation has produced a stimulating crisis of identity for music in tertiary education. Boundaries have been crossed or blurred, and selective specialization based on what George Rochberg called ‘supermarket curricula’ has taken the place of the inherited general culture based on the full range of Western music, usually Austro-German. Degrees are now offered in what used to be regarded at best as fringe areas, such as electro-acoustic composition or commercial music. The balance between performance and academic studies has shifted as well, with universities taking performance more seriously and music colleges embracing contextual and analytical study (see Conservatories, §IV). This interaction has gone a long way towards healing what Mellers in 1973 (MT, cxiv, 245–9) called ‘the breach between making and doing and knowing … epitomised in the division between music colleges (places that do) and universities (places that know)’. Theory and analysis, formerly represented by little more than a kind of critical commentary in the tradition of Tovey, in the postwar period acquired a significant stake in university courses based largely on the ideas of Schoenberg and Schenker. Periodicals such as the American Journal of Music Theory (founded in 1957) and Perspectives of New Music (1962) and the British Music Analysis (1982) provided new forums for analytical discussion, where the work of Arnold Whittall has been seminal. Composition was recognized as a discipline leading to higher degrees, and some influential British composers held positions in university music departments. By the 1950s these included Hadley, Orr, Rubbra, Wellesz, Hoddinott, Mathias and Leighton; a generation later, Goehr at Cambridge, Harvey at Sussex; and – in the 1990s – Casken at Manchester, Birtwistle at King’s College, London, and Lefanu at York.

From the 1960s many British universities became patrons of the arts with an influence in their regions comparable to that of European courts in earlier centuries. Music departments became centres of musical culture inside and outside the institution. Some universities developed their own arts centres, not always linked to music departments, and schemes employing performers and composers in residence evolved on American patterns. These developments have reflected the changing nature of the subject, notions of its public accountability and opportunities for employment in the field. Increased numbers of music students beyond those needed in performance or teaching have been justified by new outlets in the media and administration; these include radio and television, organizations such as the Arts Council and its regional Arts Associations, arts management and the recording industry. Music graduates also take up careers in jazz, pop and music theatre, with more crossovers between categories than in earlier generations.

In this increasingly fragmented musical culture it has become impossible even for relatively large music departments to offer the breadth of expertise normally expected from a full-time teaching staff; small departments have been forced to specialize. This situation has been exacerbated by government assessment of both teaching quality and research output. As a result of the quadrennial Research Assessment Exercises, on which critical state funding for universities largely depends, there has been some growth in the number of university music departments with staff actively engaged in research. (This increase partly reflects government policy in raising the numbers of students participating in higher education in general, and the granting of university status to polytechnic institutions in 1995.) Music colleges became eligible to enter the exercises in 1996 and are assessed on the same basis as universities, with composition and performance regarded as the equivalent of research. The trend towards specialization has profoundly affected undergraduate teaching, which no longer reflects music education as previously understood. Together with funding constraints, it may limit the contribution of university musicians to public life, although in the short term it has undeniably demonstrated the quality and quantity of British music scholarship.

See also Musicology, §III, 3.

Universities, §III: After 1945

BIBLIOGRAPHY

France

‘L'enseignement de la musicologie dans les universités françaises’, RdM, lvii (1971), 191–221

J. Gribenski: Thèses de doctorat en langue française relatives à la musique: bibliographie commentée (New York, 1979)

D. Pistone and M. Delahaye: Musique et musicologie dans les universités françaises (Paris, 1982)

J. Gribenski and F. Lesure: ‘La recherche musicologique en France depuis 1958’, AcM, lxiii (1991), 211–37

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